


The Suit

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-War, Spy's Multiple Choice Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:24:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story behind Spy's very first suit, and some very important lessons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Suit

"Do you take a lot of odd jobs?" Del Floria had asked him.

The Spy-- The boy who would be the Spy-- nodded, measuring the man before him carefully. 

"I need to live, Monsieur."

"Of course." A slight incline of the head, and then a sweep of the arm, ushering the Spy into a room too clean for him. 

He was never really a hick, though he'd lived on the edge of the countryside, before the war turned his life upside down, left him without a home and a family and brought him to Paris. He'd dreamed of Paris as a boy because it was cosmopolitan, everything home was not, because he equated big shining cities with success. He feels like a hick in the warm space that he is brought into now.

His first job was as a butcher's boy, before the war, his very first job. He was a courier next, though that was not a job at all, that was a higher calling. He was a saboteur as well, and a killer, and still in so many ways a boy. And then he did odd jobs, deliveries for a bakery in exchange for a blanket on the floor by the oven and a little to eat, that had been the best job he'd found in the city.

"Would you like steady work?" Del Floria asks, while the Spy wipes his feet on the mat, conscious of the plushest carpet he has ever seen in his life.

"I-- Yes, of course."

Del Floria moves to his counter, his hands making small, precise movements over the instruments of his trade, and the Spy watches, eyes wide. 

"I am in search of an apprentice." He confides, with a smile that the Spy cannot quite parse out. 

He speaks as he works, as the Spy watches. He has the thick dark hair and unmistakable name of his Italian father, the clear blue eyes and pallid complexion of his English mother, and a past with the Legion Etranger to make him a Frenchman. And, he confides, half-joking, he has the perfect pedigree for menswear. 

"The past is not another country." He tells the Spy. "It is an archipelago. Many connected islands, some are private and some are shared. This moment here, for example, is an island that you and I alone share. Now, in the future, when this island is your past, you may wish to share it with someone else. Well, that will be your business. But you cannot put a man in a boat and row him out to your old islands. You can only show him snapshots you have taken. Do you understand?"

"I think so." The Spy nods, watching the flash of the scissors as the other man works.

"Your job, then, is in framing that snapshot. Deciding what it is you want to include in your picture, and what you leave out. In picking the angle and the moment."

"... Are you... trying to teach me to lie?" The Spy asks, and the notion may be the funniest thing he has heard in... in years. 

"My dear, any child of seven can lie!" Del Floria throws his hands up and rearranges everything on his counter as if the very thought has spoiled them all. "I am telling you it is up to you to decide on what the truth is! Do you want to know my truth?"

He nods again, quiet, cowed.

"Well..." Del Floria pauses, smiles. "No. That is a story for my apprentice. And we have not decided upon that yet."

"Why do you think I--" The Spy begins, and stops himself.

"Why do I think you could learn? I've seen you around, and you seem like you have it in you to pick up the things I need to teach someone. But I cannot explain my profession to you like that!"

The Spy is very, very aware of the fact that his clothes are tattered, and dirty, and for a shorter boy. One less painfully bone-thin and sharp.

"Will you let me show you upstairs?"

He thinks he understands that, at least. He's seen others get offers-- Seen women, girls, get offers. But if Del Floria is an old queen, he is not that old, and while he does not thrill the Spy the way some boys, rough and tumble and tanned boys have, he certainly does not put him off. For a bed and a meal and the chance of a real job-- or even if there really is no other job, maybe some article of clothing that fits, clean and untorn-- he thinks he would even enjoy it.

Del Floria shows him to a bathroom that feels opulent, for all that it is small. Before the war, he thinks, it was probably average, but the Spy's world is different now and the smallest things seem like luxuries to him. He hands him a robe.

"Put this on once you're clean, those clothes need to be burned. I'll go downstairs and find something. Underthings I'll have in stock, you're small, but we'll make do-- Oh. Oh, dear boy, don't look at me like that. You are not selling yourself for this."

"I-- I'm not?"

Del Floria laughs and squeezes his shoulder, and for a moment, reminds the Spy of his uncle, who has been dead a year. There is a patience and a kindness and a sorrow in the look he gives, that the Spy could not mistake for desire.

"No. I am, of course, you've spotted that. But I don't prey on skinny young boys. I simply can't discuss these things with you when you are underdressed, that's all. Call me eccentric if you wish, I will not deny it. But I didn't invite you in so that I could chew you up and spit you out."

The Spy does not know what to make of this at all. He does not know if he is relieved or disappointed, not to be wanted for his body. He feels both, they stack atop each other curiously in his stomach as Del Floria leaves him to bathe.

Nothing makes a great deal of sense, and it makes less still when he finds himself, clean, standing before a mirror in a suit that fits him, that makes him look...

Like a man. Well-kempt and well-fed, straight-backed and broad-shouldered. 

"My profession." M. Del Floria smiles into the mirror, and there is a cold secret in the corners of that smile. "Is about many things. Concealing some things, accenting others. In a good suit, you are almost entirely a whole new man, are you not?"

"Yes." The Spy nods.

"You have to know how to flatter, and what to hide. You add things, of course. You make everything look better, but... A suit is not a lie, do you understand? It tells a few, a good one does, but there is still a body beneath. Do you know what I did during the war?"

"Made suits?"

Del Floria laughs. "I did. Do you know who I made them for?"

"Rich men, I imagine."

"Oh, well-enough-to-do ones. Men talk to their tailors. Italian, I traded on that. A good patriotic Italian, and are we not friends, then? Nevermind that I grew up in England, nevermind that my home is France, I was an Italian, and I liked German money. And men talked. A complementary little glass of something, and then another, and men talked more. For good customers, and the higher the rank the cushier the treatment, always a little glass of something. It's a shame the funerals were military, I made them all suits fine enough to be buried in. You worked, during the war. I can see that in you. You were not too young... You are Norman, are you not? And not yet twenty? But close? But you are... slight, and secretive, and I see you watch people carefully. I see the way you palm coins when you get them, as if they could melt right up your sleeve, or under your skin. Dear boy, I see in you a spy, do I not?"

And the Spy nods, very carefully, their eyes meeting in the mirror.

"What did you do?"

"Sent messages. Stood watch. Stole things, sometimes. I-- I killed a man."

"Oh? What was that like?" He asks, but the answer is there under the question.

"Scary, at first. But... only at first. And then... Good. Not because I liked killing, but... Because he was dangerous. And I was faster."

"It's good to survive." Del Floria says, with measured nod and measured smile, and careful hands on the Spy's shoulder that make the fitting room feel like home. "And surviving gets easier, if you are careful. I am going to teach you."

"About surviving?"

"Yes. And about how to pick colours and fabrics, how to take measurements. I have two professions to teach. But... they are not so different. You can make a story from whole cloth, Apprentice, but you need something real to hang it on after. And you need to know what to conceal and what to show off. Do you understand?"

And looking at himself, clean, in a suit that fits, the Spy does.


End file.
